The present invention relates generally to devices and materials for withstanding elevated temperatures and more particularly to cookware.
Cooking devices including cookware and bakeware are generally known in the art to include dishes or surfaces for containing one or more food items to be heated. Such food items may be heated during cooking using a heating source such as an oven, grill, stove-top, microwave, autoclave, burner, or open flame. In conventional cooking applications, such cookware and bakeware devices typically include a dish, plate, baking sheet or other surface or vessel for receiving food items. The cookware may be placed inside an oven or near a heating source such that the both the cookware and the food items contained in or on the cookware are both exposed to the applied heat. During cooking, cookware devices become hot as the food items are cooked. Thus, a user must take precautions to avoid getting burned when handling conventional cookware devices of this nature. Such precautions may include using one or more heat-resistant gloves, mitts or potholders to grasp and lift a heated cookware device during or after the cooking procedure. The need for external heat-resistant insulators such as gloves, mitts or potholders is inconvenient, as such items must be located and can be easily misplaced or lost in a kitchen.
Others have attempted to solve these problems by providing handles that allow a user to manipulate and hold cookware devices. Conventional cookware devices that are designed to be placed inside an oven during cooking may include one or more handles located on the outer perimeter of the cookware to allow a user to grasp the handle for removing the cookware devices from the heat source. Handles of this nature made of metal or other thermally-conductive material also become hot during cooking and do not eliminate the need for external insulators such as gloves, mitts or potholders.
To overcome these problems, others have attempted to provide dissimilar materials for cookware handles. For example, silicon, cork and plastic have been used for cookware handles. However, during cooking these items still become too hot to handle with a bare hand, and users must use an insulating material for handling heated cookware of this nature. Additionally, many of these alternative materials emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) when heated in an oven or on a stovetop, and thus are not suitable for providing insulating handles on cookware devices. Moreover, many conventional insulating materials on cookware are not environmentally sustainable or renewable and are manufactured using chemical processes that result in waste that is harmful to the environment.
In many applications, it would be desirable in the cooking industry to provide a cookware device having a handle that could be gripped with an uncovered hand, even after the cookware device has been heated on a stovetop or in an oven for an extended period of time. Additionally, it is desirable to provide cookware devices with handles that provides a safer grip with a conventional potholder or glove by reducing the heat transfer through the insulating material such that the user is not exposed to a dangerous amount of heat. Such a cookware device could eliminate or reduce the need for insulating materials such as gloves, mitts or potholders and would make various cooking tasks simpler, easier and safer.
What is needed, then, are improvements in cookware devices and handles for cookware devices.